‘There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough,’ says Valery Zaluzhny.
Russia’s war with Ukraine has become totally bogged down in the trenches, according to Ukraine’s top general.
And the prospect of a long war gives Vladimir Putin and Russia an advantage, Ukraine’s Army Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny said in a sobering interview with the Economist published Wednesday night.
In the five months since Ukraine launched an eagerly awaited counteroffensive, its troops have advanced only 17 kilometers through heavily fortified and mined Russian defense lines.
The counteroffensive has already disappointed many Ukrainian partners, some of whom are now demanding an end to military aid with the war deadlocked. However, the West’s cautious provision of weapons to Ukraine has allowed the Russians to mobilize thousands and fortify positions in occupied Ukraine, according to Zaluzhny.
Promised F-16 and Gripen fighter jets haven’t even made an impact yet, and the quality of weapons provided in international aid has been steadily increasing over the last year. Further, Ukraine has been consistent in finding ways to make all hardware provided find much more functionality than they were designed to. Seems premature to call this a stalemate. The only thing going stale has been Russia’s ability to respond in kind.
Sure, things will come to a bit of a standstill over the cold season. That was always expected. But next year, there is every reason to believe Ukraine will be able to make the break throughs they need to break Russia’s occupation entirely.
I mean, this isn’t the opinion of some analyst reporter. That’s a quote taken from the CiC himself. Maybe it’s some 5d chess pr move, but I don’t think there’s any reason to assume he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
I had to check if you responded to a troll account.
Whilst the arrival of F16 and Grippen will help, it isn’t going to be some magic bullet wonder system that will win the war for Ukraine.
They have been rocking HIMARS for about a year at this point, Lepoards, Challenger2, Bradley, Patriot, Gepard, Excalibur etc from their allies. Not to mention the home grown/home developed systems that have achieved parity and even arguably surpassed the Russian Naval impact from the Black Sea. And yet they’re still at the point where they’re pretty much at an attritional grind. Russia has done well to adapt to much of these systems and tactics, using the last winter as an example of where they shifted focus from trying to gain ground to simply holding what they have (a-la Germany following the strategic failure of Op Michael).
I will steadfastly support Ukraine and strongly believe that Russia absolutely needs to be stopped and shown that their Imperial actions cannot be allowed. But we also need to be realistic and realise this isn’t as easy as we want it to be. That Russia aren’t the complete drooling fools that we want to believe them to be.
It’s true. The magic bullets would be agm-158s w CHAMP packages. Fry all electronics on the Russian side and everything from communications to launchers become useless while occupier coordination would become nonexistent. War would be ended and Ukraine restored with a lot less bloodshed if they were deployed.
Would that also help with insane amount of mines, trenches and dumb ww2era weapons Russian is using to hold ground. Which seems to be the crux of the issue. Just like Ukrain shown, holding ground and digging in seems to be very effective strategy that might only be overcome with sheer numbers (and death…). Ukraine hope was finding a weak point in defense and punching through, but it seems that there are no real “weak” points so far. The question is, can allies provide Ukrain with weapons that can help with breaking through current defenses? So far it seems traditional weapons however advanced, don’t solve the issue of dumb mines, trenchs, and dug in positions for either side…
They should be able get rid of the mine launchers that way, preventing more mines from being deployed rapidly. Already deployed mines are probably best dealt with by the new strategies developed by Ukraine this last year, UAVs with thermal optics showing differential cooling/heating.
Edit - didn’t address trenches and dumb weapons: the value of trenches goes way down without air support and communication. Similarly, without russian radar and anti aircraft, many dumb weapons become much easier targets. So, quite possibly, yes.
That makes sense. Hopefully Ukrain gets the agms, and manages to breakthrough. I think that’s the only hope, as I agree with others that the west will get tired and start to slow down support for Ukrain which will eventually lead to Russian victory. It become a war of attrition, if Ukraine manage breakthrough or outlast Russian ability to put ppl to grinder then they will manage to win, but honestly it feels as though Putin is ready to put everything on the line to win this…